On the Exhale
by MissAnnThropic
Summary: On the inhale there’s a wet rasp and I try to pretend I don’t know it’s trapped blood.


Title: On the Exhale  
Author: MissAnnThropic  
Summary: On the inhale there's a wet rasp and I try to pretend I don't know it's trapped blood.  
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Stargate but my rabid fan behavior. Alas.

* * *

On the inhale his breath wheezes. It's a gut-wrenching sound but I cling to it all the same. My universe has distilled down to this, only him and only those sickly, frail sounds escaping his oh-so-still lips.

"Help's coming, sir," I repeat for the hundredth time... or maybe the thousandth. I don't remember how many times the words have passed my lips. It was easier at first when he used to give me a wane smirk and retort, 'Damn right, Major', followed by more of that 'I'm not going to die a million light years from home' that's become something of a private war-cry between us.

He stopped backing me up on that an hour ago and it took about three repetitions met with silence for me to realize when I was trying to reassure him he was actually reassuring me.

I'm exhausted. Not the usual up-all-night tired I get when I'm working late in the lab. This is bone-deep, mind-numbing weary. My joints ache and my jaw is tight from clenching against the cold and against the colonel's breathing and I just want to lay my head down and let the sandman take me away. I have to think when I wake up things would be better.

A childish part of me believes that, but the realist knows I could wake to find things far worse. I could wake up alone.

On the inhale there's a wet rasp and I try to pretend I don't know it's trapped blood.

"Help's coming, sir." He doesn't stir.

I shuffle an inch closer to him, an inch that wasn't between us to begin with, and I'm half laid over him but NOT on him. I'm afraid to put pressure on his ribs, afraid I'll make the weak, wet burble in his lungs worse, that his wounds will start to bleed again.

He's not so much clotting as running out of it.

I shift closer and say it's because he needs the body warmth. And he does, but not as much as I need to feel the bare brush of his clothes as his chest moves up and down with his shallows respirations. Even his broken breaths are getting quiet and I can't lose any assuring link to him.

This planet's night is quiet. Eerily so. I've been straining for sounds for what seems the better part of my adult life. Sounds are on mute like everything is stalking, keeping low and running silent and getting too close, making us. There are chirps, like mutant crickets just barely on the winds, and grunts like tree-dwelling swine echo from above us, and low-pitched, long, bourbon-smooth howls lace the night with foreboding.

Those are what reach into me, touch me with ice and I shiver and my jaw grinds. Those howls. They're not wolves. The howls aren't raucous and loud like the calls of the canine cousins on Earth. These are almost taunting, playing with me like a cat bats at a dying mouse. It's worse that the howls are so low and deliberate and subtle, and the _things_ that create the noise make wolves look cuddly.

My 9 mil is gripped in one hand. Only a handful of bullets left. My P-90 was torn from my grip during the first engagement with the pack of creatures and I haven't seen it since. Maybe they tore it apart... I saw those claws, those teeth... I wouldn't put it past the things.

I wait for them to melt out of the night and descend upon us. It seems like some kind of universal constant that predators sense weakness, and there were barely two people more vulnerable than us. Colonel O'Neill is barely hanging on, and I'm not about to leave him even if I have nothing but my resolve and an empty clip. No one gets left behind, damnit.

On the inhale he croaks weakly.

"Help's coming, sir." For a moment I thought he was conscious again but there's nothing. No quip, no joke, no irritated sigh, no complaint about kicking Goa'uld ass from one end of the galaxy to the other to end up laid out and bested by a god damn animal.

I heard that spiel before the blood loss dragged him into oblivion and if I want to hear it again I'll have to remember what he said, the way his tone dripped in pain and derision, the way he looked at me and he was angry and sorry. Angry he'd been taken off-guard, angry he'd been hurt, and sorry I'd been put into the middle.

I put herself in the middle when I saw the first monster take him down, but he wouldn't see it that way so I didn't say anything. And he didn't say anything about me 'getting to the gate and saving myself'. I could see it in his eyes, he wanted me to. Oh, how we wanted me to, but he knows better by now. He knows I wouldn't leave him, to hell with his orders, so he didn't waste the energy and I stayed. We know each other so well. So many words spared speaking because we don't need them.

I don't want silent knowledge right now, I want words. I want his voice, but instead I get this.

On the inhale it's a barely audible movement of air. I lean down a little closer as though he were trying to whisper something to me instead of just drawing in a breath. I can smell the blood and I know those _things_ have to smell it. I don't know why they're hanging back, marking time. The colonel's helpless save for me and my pathetic few 9 millimeter slugs, and I know that won't be enough to hold them back. We're easy prey.

If Daniel and Teal'c don't come back with help we'll be even easier pickings and I know it. I guess they do, too.

I know I'm bleeding. I know it, intellectually, but I don't acknowledge it. I can't. I'm the only protection the colonel has so I'm fine. I can't ignore the fact that the thing that grabbed me in its jaws, flung me like a rag doll before I managed to lodge a round down its throat, tore my vest and shirt. My vest... with my radio.

I can't stop thinking that maybe Daniel and Teal'c are already back on-planet with a rescue team and need only directions on where to find us. That thought is a sick stone settled at the bottom of my stomach. To think of help so close, wandering the woods, and just passing us by because they don't know.

I would get up to look for my radio but I can't leave the colonel. I don't want to come back to this spot to find only blood-stained leaves on the forest floor and a trail etched in the fall's slough of skin leading into blackness.

I already tried the colonel's radio but only out of desperate hope. It rattled and gave abnormally under my hands when I tried to use it. Needless to say no one answered. I have to believe Daniel and Teal'c heard enough of my frenzied call when I saw that thing tackle the colonel, enough to know we needed back-up. They'd be smart enough to bring Janet, too. This is SG-1, after all, they'd bring Janet.

It was just a matter of whether or not Janet and the others would get here in time.

On the inhale it's a sound so frail and I shiver in impotent frustration and rage surges into the back of my throat. Not like this, not like a god damn tourist at a national park stupid enough to poke around in a bear's den.

"Help's coming, sir."

It's getting colder. My extremities are oddly apart from the rest of my body, my brain a separate entity. If I were to acknowledge that I'm wounded I might blame a little of the cold on blood loss, but I'm fine and I'm the one with a gun watching over my commanding officer, so it's just this god damn planet.

I try to scan into the darkness around us but it's black as ink. Away from Earth and all hints of industrialization you realize just how dark night can be. There's nothing to give off light here and no greenhouse effect to trap it. Any light there may have been flies to the skies and right through the atmosphere into space and there's only blackness left.

I crane my neck upward at the skies, thinking briefly they might send a UAV, and the stars are brilliant. Watchers and observers but not guardians and these are alien constellations. None of men's gods are in their shapes and none of our world's machinations are there to stand between the stare of foreign heavens and us.

I bring up my hand to try and rub the sleepiness from my face and when I move I brush my palm against his chest. I jerk and on reflex start to apologize at the unintentional contact with the tacky, drying blood on his ripped skin, but he doesn't bark at me for hurting him. He doesn't even flinch and I feel the night press in closer. It's watching, voyeuristic, sadistic, the night is watching the colonel failing.

On the inhale there's a crackle deep in his throat, a brittle catch, and I shuffle closer. I bump into him and some of the wounds I don't have burn in protest and he should be spitting obscenities for jostling him even slightly, but I'm fine and he doesn't react.

My fingers venture toward his face. He's inches away but it may as well be a mile for the darkness. Starlight is so little to see by, and my fingers need to be my eyes. My numbed fingertips barely brush beard stubble. He needs a shave. When he gets home Janet will take care of that, or one of her nurses. After they've saved his life. After they've sewed him back together and made the pain a distant blur they'll clean him up. My fingers trail over his cheek. I can feel the lines. I know here, if he was smiling, there'd be a crease, what once years ago was a dimple but over the years and through the miles slipped in a facial landslide into a line. Here, the crease on his brow, too many years frowning because even when he smiles he's scowling. It's part of his charm. I run my shaky fingers over his nose then over his cheek and temple and into his hairline. What little light from the night sky there is highlights his gray hair almost fairy-land silver. I let up gently when I skirt over tender inflammations, broken skin, and hair matted with dark, sticky blood.

My hand continues to trace his face and then I'm at his left eyebrow. I study by touch the scar that bisects his eyebrow and not for the first time I wonder. I've never asked how it happened and I don't really want to know. There's something alluring about the fact his face alone is a mystery. I always responded to a challenge, to the unknown. It's an addiction to me, and that's no less true with this small scar.

I don't want to notice that his skin is cold but I have to. It's too cool to ignore; even against my night-chilled fingers he's noticeably cool to the touch.

"Help's coming."

And I know it is, but that's not really the issue. The question is whether or not they'll come in time.

I wonder if the animals will attack again before dawn. I wonder if Janet and Daniel and any last hope the colonel has are passing by just a quarter of a mile on any side of us. I wonder if this planet's nights are longer than Earth's and if the temperature will drop even lower before it starts to warm toward day. It's only relevant as it pertains to him.

On the inhale there's a stop, a stutter that's too long for my heart to take, and his breath is almost reluctant. It's fighting him now.

"Help's–" I try, but I can't.

His body is so, so still. That's all wrong. He is always moving, always shifting and fidgeting, always in action. This body sprawled beside me is unnatural in its stony motionlessness. His hands are limp and unmoving at his sides, his legs seemingly locked in their bent positions, his face so still.

My god, he's so still.

I find myself straining with everything my battered, abused body can muster to attend to his breathing. I'm tethered to his respirations. The night may as well surge and shift in time with his breaths.

I realize, with sinking certainty, that if the planet did move with him it was slowing, slowing to an ominous halt.

Help.

Janet.

Anybody.

The unanticipated urge swells within me to say his name. Jack. I don't know what magic I think that one syllable will have, but a desperate part of me thinks if I say that one word it has to do something. To speak forbidden words should have power. I want him to respond to that because he knows I don't call him by name. I want to think if I just said it, 'Jack', his eyes would open and he'd give me a look. That look. The look of so many unvoiced words. I want him to talk to me with his face, to tell me a story just by the subtleties of his expression and the dance of his eyes. I want him to tell me everything's going to be okay.

But his name is trapped in my chest and I can't get it out and I feel tendrils of panic.

I'm sorry, sir.

On the inhale there's a faint rattle.

I breathe in with him then hold my breath.

I'll stay here with him. I'll hold back the night, I'll hold back the beasts, and I'll hold back the sky, and I'll only give up on the exhale.

END


End file.
